Ive seen these being mentioned from nordic semiconductors, http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF and specifically http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/2.4GHz-RF/nRF24L01 but they're not quite in the same space as esp8266 or esp32 - they all just do WiFi or Blutooth, with much less power required than esp8266, but do not have any processor left over for doing anything else really, and memory is also very little. These are more like components when you want to build more to your wish.

Then you have this Realtek-RTL8710 which is ARM 32bit based, little less flash, more memory, and a bit more pricy, http://www.instructables.com/id/Realtek-RTL8710-Alternative-... buy here http://www.aliexpress.com/item/RTL8710-serial-WIFI-model-ESP... but it seems a bit more expensive than esp8266, which for IoT does make a difference.

So Id say, no not really, there isnt an alternative still. I think it is due to ARM requiring license costs which are higher than Xtensas so unit cost doenst reach $1.95 yet. Then it is also really difficult to both design a CPU and integrate the radio on it - with good power-management in such a small form-factor.

The Realtek is a competitor, the Nordics you mention are not. The nRF24L01 uses a proprietary radio. Some of the nRF chips are popular for Bluetooth Low Energy especially given that they do have Cortex M processors that can be used to run applications, but it ain't a competitor without WiFi.

All the alternatives are more expensive.

BLE:

* Nordic nRF51/nRF52 - Very good option. Completely documented. You can do custom radio protocols. Very popular. * TI CC2650 - Looks good. Apparently fully documented. Unlike the Nordic chip it has a separate processor for the BLE stacks so your code doesn't get interrupted during connection events. Also supports IEEE 802.15.4. CC2640 is BLE only. * Samsung Artik 1 - BLE only; looks expensive * Intel Curie - I don't know much about this but apparently it isn't well documented.

Wifi and BLE:

* Intel Edison - Powerful but very expensive * Artik 5 - Again, powerful but expensive

I'm not really aware of any other solutions that have:

* Wifi * BLE * Readily available cheap modules

You have to choose WiFi, Bluetooth, or GSM, but the Particle line of boards are pretty great, have an included Pub/Sub and event based web service, and are field programable so you can tweak your design after you solder it up and put it in an enclosure. You also get a lot more usable IO than a ESP2866.

On the down side, they cost more that an ESP and I have seen occasionally flakey behavior in some boards that requires a manual reboot every few weeks.

https://www.particle.io/

I can confirm the flaky behavior, but a flash to the new RC firmware seems to have fixed it.

https://particle.io/ has the Photon. $20 and you don't typically have to hook it up to the USB on your computer to flash it with new code. It's cloud updated.